For this year's conference, DEMO 2006 producer Chris Shipley discovered several vendors that help individuals find relevance in massive amounts of information and media:
Panoratio Database Images has a technology for taking massive datasets and making them more manageable at the desktop. In the demo, the company pulled in datasets on a desktop grid that looked suspiciously similar to the query builder in Access. In this case, however, the data had millions of rows, and results were instantaneous. At the same time, the system pulled out relationships and presented them for consideration. As a data junkie, I thought this was pretty cool. My mom (a database architect) would go nuts.
Zimini connects consumers and merchandisers, basically via custom digital couponing. Individuals create a personal account, then get coupons sent to them. There's also some campaign management features for the marketers. I saw this as a smarter Val-Pak.
Chris Shipley got me very interested in the launch of Sprout Systems when she spoke of the problem of packed, unprioritized email where important things get lost. (If I haven't responded to your email within a day, you're undoubtedly buried in some deep well of bits.) Sproutit Mailroom has neat and possibly addictive features like suggesting replies to emails based upon the previous emails that you've sent. ("Thank you for your note. I would undoubtedly love to sit down for a meeting but I am out at a conference.") What wasn't clear from the stage was if/how this would integrate with Outlook, Entourage, etc., and no FAQ on the company's web site yet.
The Eeminder guys have developed tech for mobile workers, allowing users to access corporate data from smart handhelds, with a focus on task management. The tech integrates with email-based workflow systems.
Iotum provides incoming phone call ranking and prioritization, and connects priorities to your calendar as well. e.g., if you have a meeting with someone scheduled that day, getting through to you would become a priority for your own system. What I really liked, however, was that if you have a conference bridge set up, no one has to remember the bridge number or the PIN - they simply call you (presuming that you are the moderator), and they automatically get routed to the bridge. Niiiice.
Things went old-school when OpenConnect Systems stepped up to demonstrate business process modeling that can analyze and improve upon mainframe processes.
Sadly, when I tried to save this post the first time, the DEMO wireless had timed out...so I'm missing a fat paragraph for the Sharpcast system for digital media management. Let's just say that it was well-done, and worth checking out.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys demo 2006 panoratio zimini openconnect sharpcast sproutit eeminder iotum technology
